I decided to start a new support thread for that specific laptop so as we, gentle owners of that bleeding-edge technology representative can share our thoughts, experience and woes (there shouldn't be too many ).

Since Dell laptops configuration can differ a lot (especially on the video card), there will be as many chapters in this post. I'll update this post as soon as I have a little time and I get feedback. I'll start with the main things I've done and that gave me plain satisfaction.

Hardware description

This laptop features the new ICH7(M) chipset, Centrino Solo or Duo and HD audio. The graphics card may be nVidia 7800Go or Intel GMA950. The screen may be 1440x900 or 1920x1200.

On mine there is a 1920x1200 widescreen with an nVidia 7800Go. (It could have been worse I admit...) Note I got the full definition on the Wireless LAN from lspci for I edited /usr/share/misc/pci.ids and added the following line:

As I had an Inspiron 6000 before I just plain copied the whole system onto the new laptop, changing here and there only a few kernel options. I also added/removed some packages. Though both laptops don't even share the same hardware, there are only a few changes that must be made to Gentoo and the kernel. Cloning was at least an easy, nice and cool experience here .

26th February: I've now produced a set of three ebuilds for ipw3945 from the Intel drivers and packages. I have tested them on my system and they seem to work properly. See my post in ipw3945 wireless drivers for a complete installation guide.

Until now the remaining problem is about the Audio jack: sound is not cut off when a jack is inserted.

I did never get success out of Suspend2 so I've dropped it from my configuration. I never tried Software Suspend either though it has been reported to work better then Suspend2. I'll try if I feel like I should .

But... wait, what about the SD Card Reader? Hehe... see below...

General setup

Here are the packages I used:

Gentoo Sources 2.6.15-r5

udev-079-r1

baselayout-1.12.0_pre13-r1

netplug-1.2.9-r1

acpid-1.0.4-r3

cpufreqd-2.0.0

cpufrequtils-0.4

xorg-x11-6.8.2-r6 (reverted from xorg-x11-6.8.99.15-r4)

synaptics-0.14.4-r2

I removed i8kutils even though I enabled Dell Laptop features. Control over the fans seems to be better accomplished by the BIOS.

As you know Gentoo now uses GCC 3.4. If you haven't migrated yet, well, you should as it has been enhanced for Pentium-M support and is now stable.

At first sound with the built-in driver was either poor or produced background noise. With recent kernels this problem does not happen anymore. You have to use Alsa driver from portage however to get the latest fixes on HD Audio bugs.

Note: with 2.6.16 kernel series patches might appear not to be applied. You can check this web site (disgruntledgoat.com) for any help on how to apply patches for these kernel series. It's about Gentoo Linux on a Dell Inspiron 630m but the hardware is almost identical.

Frame buffer consoles

Ok, you'll probably cry rivers on that one. All I could do so far was to get the 1400x1050-32@60 VESA default mode. I'm using VESA-TNG for the frame buffer console (I wish I had more); vbetest only shows resolutions like 1400x1050 or 1600x1200 at best, which means I've got a crappy BIOS as usual... In short: forget about widescreen resolutions on framebuffer consoles for the moment - until someone sheds some light on it.

Video under Xorg (nVidia 7800)

Emerge the latest drivers from nVidia as they will support the new 7800 Go. Then run xorgconfig as you would normally. Then edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the Screen section:

I personnally find the mouse goes a little too fast with the touchpad but I can accomodate.

Final notes

If you want to get CD/DVD burning work, you must have udev-070-r1 or later. It eliminates the need for custom rules to create nodes for the CD/DVD writer.

DMA seems to work as I can play DVD without screaming at sluggishness .

I found leaving the BIOS control the fans gave me better satisfaction than using i8kutils. Otherwise the left fan happened to run for one second, pause for one second, run for one second, pause for two... At least now it stays quiet for longer periods and is triggered only when necessary. I've also added Gnome Sensors Applet to my Gnome Desktop and therefore can watch the temperature. I've got rid of the fan speed indicators as they just gave me silly speeds (more than 100,000 rpm ). Hence I dropped them.

Thanks for getting this thread started. I'm helping a friend [trautenberg] with a Gentoo Install on his 9400, and am pulling my hair out over the video card configuration. He opted for (quoting the Dell Invoice) something inbetween a Intel Media Accelerator 900-950. So it's a toss up.

It looks like you accidentally dropped a star (*) in a [code] bbCode instead of the closing slash..._________________Gentoo addict: tomorrow I quit, I promise!... Just one more emerge...
GNU/Linux user #369763

... He opted for (quoting the Dell Invoice) something inbetween a Intel Media Accelerator 900-950. So it's a toss up.

He must use the latest kernels (probably unmasked versions of Vanilla Sources for a start). I think support for i945 has been put in 2.6.15 and later kernels._________________Gentoo addict: tomorrow I quit, I promise!... Just one more emerge...
GNU/Linux user #369763

Thanks for getting this thread started. I'm helping a friend [trautenberg] with a Gentoo Install on his 9400, and am pulling my hair out over the video card configuration. He opted for (quoting the Dell Invoice) something inbetween a Intel Media Accelerator 900-950. So it's a toss up.

Support for 945GM isn't in portage yet. (or atleast not in the modular X.org which I'm using). The driver available in portage is 1.4.1.3 and the 945GM is supported by versions >=1.5.0.0.

flywheelbot wrote:

Of course VESA works fine, but doesn't operate at our desired resolution--just sticks with a streched 1024x768. Has anyone else sucessfully setup this video card at 1440x900? (or higher?)

I'm guessing the 1440x900 resolution isn't available. I had to use 915resolution to setup 1280x800 resolution, because it wasn't listed as available and therefore vesa driver worked only at 1024x768. But with 915resolution I replaced one of the modes with 1280x800 32bpp and after that the VESA driver worked fine.

But with VESA driver xv isn't available and I have to use cvs versions of x.org server and i810-video driver. (i810 driver alone wouldn't work so I had to compile cvs version of the server also). And for some reason with the i810 driver I'm limited to 16bpp depth, but atleast xv works.

edit: Oh, yes, and I'm using 2.6.16-rc4 vanilla kernel, support for 945GM AGP came in rc2 or rc3.

There seems to be a downloadable package. Look, I'll check it and probably make an ebuild if I can and there's none in portage._________________Gentoo addict: tomorrow I quit, I promise!... Just one more emerge...
GNU/Linux user #369763

How did you determine the timings for the monitor? My 9400 came without any technical specs.

In fact I didn't. I just ran xorgconfig and selected a screen that could do 1280x1024 at 60 hertz. Then I edited xorg.conf. The nVidia drivers seem to ignore sync rates.

But I know there is a way to get the refresh rates. It should be somewhere in the Dell Inspiron 6000 thread or i915 and xorg how? by Klavs, I don't remember exactly._________________Gentoo addict: tomorrow I quit, I promise!... Just one more emerge...
GNU/Linux user #369763

Thanks for the input. I got my 9400 just this week and I've been compiling whole day long

Anyways, I can conform the crackling sound output - which wasnt fixed with the module option you mentioned.

I also have another problem: I couldn't resist and also ordered the gargantuan Dell 24" LCD (800 euros - who could say no? ) which I want to use as an external monitor when I'm at home. This works fine, if - and only if - I use the Fn-key to switch to the external display before X comes up. If I make the switch later (or if I'm trying to switch back to the notebook screen) I suddenly get a virtual desktop at VGA resolution.

Anyone with ideas on that? Both screens use the same resolution (1920x1200) and according to the Nvidia readme file, the Fn-key switching is fully supported (if TwinView is inactive).

BTW: I'm currently trying to find out which modules can be used for hardware monitoring - if I'm able to find something out, I'll let you guys know.

Good news guys! I've successfully created the ebuild set and know what? They work. The only evidence is I'm currently writing this post from my laptop under Gentoo . YESSSSSSSSSSSS!

I'll post the ebuilds as a tar file I think, so that you can unpack them in your favorite portage overlay directory. The ebuild set is made of three packages:

the main driver module

the microcode

a regulatory daemon binary.

The set differs from the usual ipw2xxx in that there is a binary file to run after the module has been loaded.

Also you *must* remove kernel built-in support for ieee802.11 and use portage's instead. But I'll explain it in my howto above._________________Gentoo addict: tomorrow I quit, I promise!... Just one more emerge...
GNU/Linux user #369763

So it seems you can have native panel resolution, but not the option to use the nvidia drivers as well.

But this means X will be unusable, then, am I right? Or it'll use only VESA for graphics ... I'd rather sacrify framebuffer consoles than X._________________Gentoo addict: tomorrow I quit, I promise!... Just one more emerge...
GNU/Linux user #369763

We should probably start a new topic in one of the other boards however, as this one is now inappropriate.

Don't worry, we can still discuss it here, the Dell Inspiron 6000 for instance went far beyond the scope of just installing Gentoo ._________________Gentoo addict: tomorrow I quit, I promise!... Just one more emerge...
GNU/Linux user #369763

Note there would be a little trick: turn on screen expansion. Framebuffer consoles look ugly only if screen expansion is turned off *and* the screen ratio is 4/3. Unfortunately my (hell of a crappy) BIOS lists only resolutions that have a 4/3 screen ratio ._________________Gentoo addict: tomorrow I quit, I promise!... Just one more emerge...
GNU/Linux user #369763